Just Survive Dev Blog Update 09/23

My name is Justin (aka Mourde, pronounced âmooredâ if youâre interested) and Iâm a Senior Systems Designer who recently joined the H1Z1: Just Survive team. Some of you may have already seen me posting on Twitter and Reddit, but for those of you who havenât â hi! With an impending Just Survive update on the horizon I wanted to take a few minutes to review the changes youâll be seeing. Weâve got a lot to go over. Weâre bringing back a much-requested feature with some improved functionality, porting over some features originally developed for King of the Kill we think can add to the Just Survive experience, and weâve got a couple bug fixes in there as well. So letâs dive on in and start with Bullet Crafting!

Bullet Crafting is back! Ammunition can now be salvaged for unique components with a right-click interaction from your inventory. These components can be used to discover recipes which will enable you to craft other bullet types. There is some loss built into this process though, so make sure youâre certain you donât want that ammo before salvaging it! In addition, some will require additional parts beyond just what you gain from salvage. For example, shotgun shells take plastic (keep those empty water bottles handyâ¦) and some of the more powerful ammunition will require metal scrap for assembly as well. To craft all these bullets youâre going to need to discover the recipe for the new Weapon Workbench. This will now be the go-to crafting table required for anything thatâs using explosives or gunpowder. So, in addition to ammunition, other recipes like weapon disassembly and IEDs will require that you have proximity to this crafting table.

Moving on, we have ported the ignition/hotwire system from King of the Kill over to Just Survive. This means that any vehicles you find will have a new hotwire item present in the vehicle inventory. To start the engine, youâll need to use a right-click interaction on the hotwire item, unless youâre lucky enough to have found one with a key! If the vehicle, you, or any of your passengers have a key with them, the vehicle will start right up. The real convenience of this is that you donât need to spend time pulling the spark plugs anymore to keep your ride from getting jacked out from under you! Just keep your ears open for the hotwire sound (an engine attempting to turn over). If you hear that, hotfoot it back to your vehicle and blast that carjacker before they know what hit âem! For reference, your friendly neighborhood zombies also have a small chance of dropping a key, so keep your eyes open. One more small addition to vehicles - if you happen to end up upside-down, you can now exit the vehicle and interact with it to flip it back over. So commence the stunt jumps!

Beyond all this weâre chipping away at the bugs youâve been reporting. While we regretfully are still working on a few base exploits, we have hit up some smaller quality of life issues. Baggy Blue Jeans for instance can now be skinned and weâve updated a few miscellaneous item descriptions which had erroneous text in them (such as the Lighter). Also, if you drop the Skinning Knife, you can pick it up again. Finally, weâve disabled dead players respawning as a zombie NPC. While the idea of this feature is sound, weâre not happy with its execution at this time. Weâre taking it offline until such time as we can re-evaluate how it fits in to the bigger picture and ensure itâs working in a way that weâre happy with.